As President Obama wraps-up his second term, people are looking back to reassess his handling of the Great Recession. During his first year in office, our Disappointer-In-Chief introduced his own version of “trickle-down economics” by way of a bank bailout scheme called the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP or “pee-pip”).
Despite his July 15, 2008, campaign promise that if he were elected, there would be “no more trickle-down economics”, the President and the Federal Reserve embarked on a course of bailing out the banks, rather than distressed businesses or the taxpayers themselves.
As this writer pointed out on Sept. 21, 2009, Australian economist Steve Keen published a report from his website explaining how the “money multiplier” myth, fed to Obama by the very people who facilitated the financial crisis, would be of no use in the effort to strengthen the economy.
Concerns that the United States could be doomed to a Japan-like addiction to monetary stimulus gimmicks have amped-up enthusiasm for the Fed to become more aggressive about raising interest rates. Meanwhile, many economists contend that tightening monetary policy before the economy reaches a robust state could plunge the nation back into recession.
In April 2016, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke advocated the use of “helicopter money” as a last-resort strategy to jump-start a stalled economy. This provoked a response from economist Steve Keen emphasizing that Bernanke and other mainstream economists have shared a flawed belief that the public’s expectations for a healthy rate of inflation could cause such inflation to occur. In other words: “Inflationary expectations cause inflation.”
Steve Keen consistently emphasizes the need to understand how excessive private debt causes severe economic contraction and financial crises. Specifically, when the level of private debt exceeds GDP by 150% and that level continues to grow – disaster awaits.
So what can be done to keep the debt-to-GDP ratio in check? In this video, Steve Keen and Edward Harrison of the Credit Writedowns website explain how Ben Bernanke’s helicopter could be sent on a debt reduction mission.
Comments Off on More Damned Lies Than You Can Count
March 15, 2010
Thanks to the great work of Anton Valukas, as court-appointed bankruptcy examiner investigating the collapse of Lehman Brothers, people are finally beginning to realize how significant a role fraud plays on Wall Street. It turned out that the Enron scandal wasn’t the once-in-a-lifetime event people thought it was. Accounting fraud occurs on a regular basis, as does fraudulent stock price manipulation. The 2200-page report prepared by Valukas and his team at Jenner & Block has everyone talking. It’s about time.
Other lies are getting more exposure as well. President Obama justified the bank bailouts with the rationale that giving the money to the banks creates a “money multiplier” effect because banks can loan out 8-10 dollars for every bailout dollar they get, giving the economy more bang for the bailout buck. As I pointed out on September 21, Australian economist Steve Keen published a fantastic report from his website, explaining how the “money multiplier” myth, fed to Obama by the very people who helped cause the crisis, was the wrong paradigm to be starting from in attempting to save the economy. Here’s some of what Professor Keen had to say:
He justified giving the money to the lenders, rather than to the debtors, on the basis of “the multiplier effect” from bank lending:
the truth is that a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollars of loans to families and businesses, a multiplier effect that can ultimately lead to a faster pace of economic growth. (page 3 of the speech)
This argument comes straight out of the neoclassical economics textbook. Fortunately, due to the clear manner in which Obama enunciates it, the flaw in this textbook argument is vividly apparent in his speech.
This “multiplier effect” will only work if American families and businesses are willing to take on yet more debt: “a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollars of loans”.
So the only way the roughly US$1 trillion of money that the Federal Reserve has injected into the banks will result in additional spending is if American families and businesses take out another US$8-10 trillion in loans.
* * *
If the money multiplier was going to “ride to the rescue”, private debt would need to rise from its current level of US$41.5 trillion to about US$50 trillion, and this ratio would rise to about 375% — more than twice the level that ushered in the Great Depression.
This is a rescue? It’s a “hair of the dog” cure: having booze for breakfast to overcome the feelings of a hangover from last night’s binge. It is the road to debt alcoholism, not the road to teetotalism and recovery.
Fortunately, it’s a “cure” that is also highly unlikely to work, because the model of money creation that Obama’s economic advisers have sold him was shown to be empirically false over three decades ago.
Now that Australia’s economy is beginning to recover, they have already found it necessary to begin raising interest rates. As I pointed out last September:
If only Mr. Obama had stuck with his campaign promise of “no more trickle-down economics”, we wouldn’t have so many people wishing they lived in Australia.
Michael Shedlock (“Mish”) recently referred to Professor Keen’s debunking of the money multiplier myth in a fantastic essay:
However, conventional wisdom regarding the money multiplier is wrong. Australian economist Steve Keen notes that in a debt based society, expansion of credit comes first and reserves come later.
Indeed, this is easy to conceptualize: Banks lent more than they should have, and those loans are going bad at a phenomenal rate. In response, the Fed has engaged in a huge swap-o-rama party with various banks (swapping treasuries for collateral of dubious value) in addition to turning on the printing presses.
This was done so that banks would remain “well capitalized”. The reality is those excess reserves are a mirage. Banks need those reserves for credit losses coming down the pike, as unemployment rises, foreclosures mount, and credit card defaults soar.
Banks are not well capitalized, they are insolvent, unwilling and unable to lend.
Blogger George Washington recently wrote an extensive, thought-provoking piece about public banking and other potential alternatives to resolve the economic crisis, which appeared at the Naked Capitalism website. The essay began with a discussion of Steve Keen’s work in exposing the “money multiplier” as a sham.
Speaking of shams, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently wrote a great essay entitled, “The Sham Recovery”. Reich has exposed the propagandists touting the imaginary economic recovery in his unique, clear style:
Business cheerleaders naturally want to emphasize the positive. They assume the economy runs on optimism and that if average consumers think the economy is getting better, they’ll empty their wallets more readily and — presto! — the economy will get better. The cheerleaders fail to understand that regardless of how people feel, they won’t spend if they don’t have the money.
It’s always nice when a big lie gets exposed. It’s even better that we are now learning that the true cause of the financial crisis was plain, old sleaze.
TheCenterLane.com offers opinion, news and commentary on politics, the economy, finance and other random events that either find their way into the news or are ignored by the news reporting business. As the name suggests, our focus will be on what seems to be happening in The Center Lane of American politics and what the view from the Center reveals about the events in the left and right lanes. Your Host, John T. Burke, Jr., earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College with a double major in Speech Communications and Philosophy. He earned his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law.
